Lava Jato: Gabriela Hardt assumes Youssef’s wiretapping case – 05/24/2023 – Politics

Judge Gabriela Hardt, who took over the Operation Lava Jato processes with the temporary removal of her colleague Eduardo Appio, is the one who will continue a request from the defense of whistleblower Alberto Youssef in which full access is requested to investigations into the case of the listening device environment found in 2014 in the money changer’s cell at the Federal Police, in Curitiba.

On the morning of this Tuesday (23), she already filed the lawsuit, requesting a statement from the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office.

According to the petition of Youssef’s defense, filed at the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba on April 18, the objective is to obtain evidence “to assess the willingness and spontaneity of the collaboration with possible effects on the validity of the collaboration agreement” of the money changer.

“The victim of the illegal wiretapping, even after 9 years of having reported the facts to the Court of the 13th Federal Court of Curitiba, in flagrant violation of the most basic constitutional principles, still has not obtained access to the content of the illegal wiretap and the conclusion of the investigations”, they write. Youssef’s lawyers.

The money changer was the main target of the initial stage of Lava Jato, in 2014, and months later he signed one of the first collaboration agreements of the operation, in which he accused politicians and contractors. Any breach of the agreement may have repercussions for the entire investigation.

“Youssef is the main character in this whole plot, he is the black box of the entire Lava Jato Operation, I have no doubt,” said Appio in an interview with GloboNews on Monday (22), hours before being removed.

In the same interview, he said, speaking in theory, that if there is illegality in the signed commitment, “this naturally affects all the accusations, all the agreements and the evidence produced”.

“It is called the theory of the fruits of the poisoned tree. If the trunk of the tree is poisoned, the fruits it produces will be poisoned”, he stated at the time.

The judge was removed from his duties on Monday night by order of the special administrative court of the TRF-4 (Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region). The court is investigating whether the magistrate called the son of the former Lava Jato rapporteur in court pretending to be someone else, in April.

Appio, before the removal, had already accepted the request of Youssef’s defense, and part of the Federal Police’s investigations into the illegal wiretap is already with the money changer’s lawyers. But the defense is still awaiting material, such as the audio captured from the cell.

Subsequently, Judge Appio withdrew the secrecy of the procedure and also communicated the Superintendence of the Federal Police of Paraná for the possible opening of a police investigation “for the rigorous and necessary investigation of the facts denounced by Alberto Youssef (through his lawyers)”.

“The elements found in the aforementioned administrative investigation by the Internal Affairs of the PF allow us to state that there are concrete and documented indications about the commission of serious crimes, in theory, in the aforementioned imprisonment”, wrote Appio.

Critical of the methods of the former authorities of the operation, such as Senator Sergio Moro (União Brasil-PR), Appio took over the Federal Court in February.

A few weeks later, in March, the judge twice ordered the arrest of the money changer, but the two warrants ended up overturned in the end by Judge Marcelo Malucelli, from the TRF-4, then rapporteur for Lava Jato in the second instance, and Youssef was no longer that 24 hours stuck.

In the first order, Appio stated that there was still an open Federal Revenue procedure regarding possible tax crimes attributed to the money changer.

The second time, the magistrate cited evidence of evasion of real estate by the whistleblower. On the occasion, he mentioned a report by federal police who went to arrest the money changer on the coast of Santa Catarina. The agents had informed that, at the address given to carry out the arrest warrant, children said that the money changer was “owner of all those buildings”, but did not live there.

The petition presented to Appio by Youssef received a request on May 22 from the PF delegate Mário Renato Castanheira Fanton, in which he filed a criminal notice about an “allegedly articulated and illegal scheme for the production of illegal evidence in the entire Lava Jato operation until the days of today”.

Fanton had already pointed out irregularities in the past and was considered a disaffection of authorities that acted in Lava Jato.

Shortly before 9:30 am this Tuesday, Gabriela Hardt has already started the process, by determining the inclusion of the MPF, “subpoenaing him to be aware of the records and to demonstrate” on the criminal notice presented by Fanton.

The judge is a substitute on the Federal Court responsible for Lava Jato. She even led the cases temporarily between 2018 and 2019, after Moro left the judiciary, and proved to be aligned with the theses of the current senator.

Hardt, for example, issued the sentence that condemned Lula to prison in the criminal action at the Atibaia site (SP), in a measure that was later annulled by the Federal Supreme Court.

His tenure now at the head of the operation’s cases is also temporary.